Obama as the end of racism?

The N.Y. Times posted this article yesterday entitled Talk About Race?: Relax It’s Okay. My first gripe with the article is that it’s in the Fashion and Style section, which is apparently where they throw any article that has anything to do with “feelings” or psychology. But more importantly than that is the way in which this article suggests that Obama’s presidency will end race tensions in the United States and also assumes that before Obama black and white Americans were physically incapable of having meaningful conversations about race. Furthermore, it assumes that the black/white binary is the only racial tension that exists in the United States. Also, the article’s stories just border on ridiculous.

Check out this nugget:

On the morning after the election, Kristin Rothballer, 36, who lives in San Francisco, kissed her female partner goodbye on the train while commuting to work. A black woman who sat down next to her turned and said she was sorry that Proposition 8, the amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, looked like it was going to pass.

“We grabbed hands,” Ms. Rothballer recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, I really want to congratulate you because we have a black president and that’s amazing.’ ”

“Our conversation then almost became about the fact that we were having the conversation,” she said.

Something moved her to apologize to the black woman for slavery.

“For two strangers riding a train to Oakland to have that conversation about race, it wouldn’t have been possible if Obama hadn’t been elected,” she said. “I always felt open with my colleagues, but to say to a stranger on the train, ‘Hey, I’m sorry about slavery,’ that just doesn’t happen.”

Now I love Obama, and I do agree that his election was a HUGE step forward for our country. But racism is not going to disappear just as the result of one election. Obama cannot magically make this country’s problems disappear. It’s time that we use Obama’s election not as a symbol of the end of racism in America, but to continue the conversation about race that has been ongoing in many communities and really take action.